Mobile Police Patlabor

In a near-future Japan, giant machines called Labors have become everyday tools for construction and heavy industry. Their usefulness also makes them dangerous in the wrong hands. To handle crimes involving these powerful machines, the police establish a specialist unit equipped with patrol Labors of its own. Noa Izumi joins a team whose duties combine enormous hardware with the awkward routines of an ordinary workplace. Pilots, commanders and mechanics must cooperate under public scrutiny, balancing their enthusiasm for the machines against the practical limits of policing crowded streets. Behind individual incidents lie larger interests in the technology's development and use. Masami Yuki's manga gives its robots weight by placing them inside a functioning society. Mechanical action shares space with office humour, investigations and the relationships of an unusual police squad, making the people who operate and maintain the equipment as important as the machines themselves.